Hi Bob.

25-Apr-04 13:09:01, Bob Lawrence wrote to Jasen Betts


 BL>> another interesting proof that the Earth is heating up.

 JB>> Shit! Bob, I thought you'd be smarter than to fall for this crap.

BL> You mean that *you* have special knowledge, do you?

The crap was in the remainder of the message, the author showed
deficient in his knowlege of timekeeping.

AFAICT the world climate is heating up, but bullshit articles are
counterproductive in convincing people.

 BL>> This year the extra second wasn't necessary.

 JB>> Which means very little in itself.. the amount from the past few
 JB>> years may he sufficient to have the clock in sync with the sun's
 JB>> apparent position. but for the sake of this argument lets assume
 JB>> that it is significant.

 BL> *MAY*? Where did you get that from? It *may* even be caused by
 BL> aliens moving the Universe, or wankers shooting in opposition to
 BL> rotation... but it's not. For Christ's sake! They're measuring
 BL> time against an atomic clock, so either the clock sped up or the
 BL> earth slowed down. That's the whole thing...

a leap-second is an extra second inserted into the calendar to correct
the synchronisation of the 24 hour day and the location of the sun
(dunno if measured at Grenwich or elsewhere)

So it's not the whole thing, for a start they never use fractional leap
seconds. Think about the implications of that. the presence or absence of a
leap-day (ie 29 feb) in some any year does not indicate that the orbit of
the earth around the sun is taking more or less time....

If a year worth of earth days years was always 0.9 seconds too long one
year in 10 they wouldn't need a leap second.

Not needing a leap-second isn't significant it itself.

 BL>> The polar icecaps are melting, more water flows to the equator,
 BL>> and like a spinning ice-skater pushing his arms out, the spin of
 BL>> the Earth has slowed...

 JB>> if the earth spins slower then there will be fractionally more
 JB>> seconds in a day and thefore 365 days will be longer (by some
 JB>> fraction of a second) and presumably that would call for more
 JB>> leap-seconds not fewer

 BL> Think about it... *you've* got it arse-up.

Where exactly do you claim thag I am in error?

 a slower earth means longer days
 longer days mean longer calendar years
  ie 365 days takes longer when measures on the atomic clock.
 longer calendar years means leap seconda are needed more often
 to synchronise the atomic clock to the earths rotation.

Anyway the moon's slowing the earth's rotation, it has been since
forever, and the author conveniently ignored that.

 -=> Bye <=-
---